Stanislav Petrov: Another Man Who Saved The World From A Nuclear War — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:04Cold War nuclear strategies expert and former president of the World Security Institute Bruce G. Blair said this
2. 0:10during an interview on Dateline NBC back in November 2000 about Stanislav Petrov.
3. 0:16We just explored something similar a few episodes ago with Vasili Arkhipov.
4. 0:20Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right
5. 0:25not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom,
6. 0:31here in this Hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world.
7. 0:35God willing, that goal would be achieved.
8. 0:38Guess there’ve been a lot of close calls when it comes to the destruction of the civilized world.
9. 0:42So who exactly is Petrov and what did he do to save the world from a nuclear war?
10. 0:52Stanislav Petrov was born on the 7th of September 1939 near Vladivostok.
11. 0:57His father was a fighter pilot during World War II and his mother was a nurse.
12. 1:01After graduating from the Kyiv Higher Engineering Radio-Technical College of the Soviet Air Forces back in 1972,
13. 1:08he became a part of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.
14. 1:10He quickly climbed up the ranks and became a lieutenant colonel.
15. 1:14He was assigned to the new early-warning system back in the early 1970s
16. 1:18where he worked in detecting ballistic missile attacks from NATO countries.
17. 1:221983 is the height of the Cold War.
18. 1:25It was the 26th of September 1983, more than twenty years since the B-59 submarine incident with Vasili Arkhipov.
19. 1:31I had a written order that I could release it. And if there was an order to fire a torpedo, I would do it.
20. 1:38Without a second thought.
21. 1:40Petrov was on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow.
22. 1:44In it was the command center of the early warning satellites—code-named Oko.
23. 1:48If inbound missiles were detected, the Soviet Union’s strategy was to launch a counter-attack against the United States,
24. 1:54as stated in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.
25. 1:57We were prepared just in case.
26. 2:00And this just in case happened.
27. 2:04It was half an hour past midnight. The computers just detected something.
28. 2:08On the panel in front of Petrov was the flashing red button. The word “start” stared at him.
29. 2:13Start
30. 2:15The siren hailed.
31. 2:17One intercontinental ballistic missile was detected to be headed towards the Soviet Union from the US.
32. 2:23Shortly after, the warning system detected four additional missiles in the air.
33. 2:27Everyone was stunned. Petrov started giving orders. But he was having doubts.
34. 2:31The team scrambled to check the authenticity of the signal.
35. 2:34They had only 28 minutes until the impact.
36. 2:37He didn’t understand why there would be just five missiles.
37. 2:40If the US were going for a nuclear attack, he thought that there would be hundreds of missiles blacking out the skies,
38. 2:46to stop the Soviet Union from retaliating with a counterattack.
39. 2:50The Soviet land-based radar installations also showed no signs of an attack.
40. 2:54They cannot detect missiles rising above the horizon.
41. 2:57That means they would not be alerted until around 15 minutes after the satellites like the one Petrov was in were alerted.
42. 3:04No missiles reached the Soviet Union after a quarter of an hour.
43. 3:07The satellite system was also rushed into action and was not entirely trustworthy.
44. 3:12In less than five minutes since that red button flashed, Petrov concluded it to be a false alarm and reported it to his superiors.
45. 3:19It was later determined that the satellite mistook the sun’s reflection off high-altitude clouds as a missile launch.
46. 3:34Relations between the US and the Soviet Union were incredibly strained back in 1983.
47. 3:39In response to the Soviet Union’s deployment of 14 nuclear missiles, NATO deployed 108 Pershing II nuclear missiles in Western Europe
48. 3:47back in December 1979, capable of striking eastern Ukraine, Belorussia, or Lithuania within 10 minutes.
49. 3:54The slower but longer-range BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missiles, capable of hitting farther to the east, were also deployed.
50. 4:03From February 1981 to 1983, the US also conducted psych-ops.
51. 4:08Not even comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success.
52. 4:15They tested Soviet radar vulnerability and demonstrated their nuclear capabilities. Secret naval operations were done.
53. 4:23Even American bombers flew toward Soviet airspace before turning away at the last moment to intimidate the Soviet Union.
54. 4:29Soviet leaders believed that the US was preparing for a nuclear attack.
55. 4:33Yuri Andropov, then chairman of the KGB, initiated Operation RYAN back in May 1981.
56. 4:39KGB agents collected intelligence and monitored the possibility of a nuclear attack from the US.
57. 4:45On the 1st of September 1983, just 25 days before the incident with Petrov, the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean passenger jet,
58. 4:53Korean Air Lines Flight 007, killing all 269 people inside the aircraft.
59. 4:59US soldiers heard what they thought was a routine Soviet training mission.
60. 5:08Inside it was US Congressman Larry McDonald and many more Americans.
61. 5:13The distrust between the Soviet Union and the Americans was significant; the pressure against Petrov was understandably immense.
62. 5:20General Yuri Votintsev, then commander of the Soviet Air Defense’s Missile Defense Units,
63. 5:26was the one who first heard Petrov’s report of the incident.
64. 5:29Petrov underwent questioning and was initially praised for his ultimate decision.
65. 5:33He was promised some reward but he only ended up being reprimanded for improper filing of paperwork
66. 5:38for not writing down everything about the incident in the military diary.
67. 5:41He said that if he would have been rewarded, his superiors and the scientists responsible
68. 5:46for the bugs found in the system would have been punished.
69. 5:55Petrov got a job at the research institute that had developed the early warning system a year later in 1984.
70. 6:01He later retired, clarifying that the army did not force him out as some Western sources claimed.
71. 6:06It was to take care of his wife Raisa who was diagnosed with cancer. She later died in 1997.
72. 6:13Petrov followed her twenty years later on the 19th of May 2017, after passing away from hypostatic pneumonia.
73. 6:19It seemed that his importance was not valued enough
74. 6:22since it wasn’t widely reported until September later that year.
75. 6:26Petrov wasn’t so keen on regarding himself as a hero. He said in an interview for the film The Man Who Saved the World,
76. 6:51After ten or eleven minutes passed, the relief came.
77. 6:55The over-the-horizon location radar stations did not find anything and the decision I have made was confirmed.
78. 7:03The start was false.
79. 7:05But it could have been everything. It’s been almost forty years.
80. 7:08If today’s nuclear threat ever becomes a possibility, who would be the person or people to prevent it?
81. 7:13Other than Vasili Arkhipov, who would be our next Stanislav Petrovs?